Thread of Glass

Chapter 1

PROLOGUE — ROAD TO EDINBURGH

Rain hammered the windshield as Zoya drove toward Edinburgh, unaware she'd already run out of time.

She checked the rearview mirror, then looked down—her grip on the wheel had gone painfully tight, knuckles bleached white against the leather.

The headlights were still behind her. Too close. Too steady.

Her thumb hovered over one name.

*Raiyan.*

It stayed on the screen three seconds too long before she moved past it.

She called Mei. No response.

Faiyaz. She hit call. Ring. Ring. Nothing.

*The number you are trying to reach is currently out of reach.*

She was already sliding to Evan's contact when the phone buzzed in her hand.

Daniel. Her mother's security chief.

She answered before the second ring. "Daniel, I'm being followed. I'm almost—"

"Zoya, get out of the car. Right now." His breathing was uneven, words rushing together like he hadn't stopped running to say them. "They found you. He's—"

A gunshot tore through the phone.

"Daniel?" Her voice cracked. "Daniel!"

Nothing. The line stayed open. Rain hissed through the speaker, the only sound left on his end of the world.

She looked up. The truck was still there. Closer now. Every turn she took, it followed.

The truck surged forward.

It slammed into the back of her car hard enough to rip the wheel sideways beneath her hands. Her car shot across the muddy shoulder, rolled once, and came down hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

For a long second she couldn't move. The engine ticked somewhere ahead of her. Rain drummed against the shattered windshield.

She looked down. The seatbelt had cut across her stomach. Both hands flew there before she realized she'd started crying.

The driver's door groaned as it shifted. Gasoline, faint, threading through the wreck.

Someone was walking toward the car.

She lifted her head. The man stepped out of the rain, stopped beside her window, and raised the gun with a calm that had nothing left in it to negotiate with.

She wrapped both arms around her stomach, protecting the only thing that mattered.

"Please," she whispered, voice breaking. "Don't hurt them."

The man behind the gun didn't move. He only stared at her.

---

CHAPTER 1 — EVERYTHING EXCEPT YOU

Two and a half years later.

The study door opened without a sound. Nelson stopped the moment he saw them.

Raiyan looked up.

Liyana was still asleep against his chest, one hand tangled in his shirt.

"She refused everyone tonight," Nelson said, careful to keep his voice under the sound of her breathing. "Kept asking for you."

Raiyan glanced down at his daughter, fingers moving slowly through her hair. "I know."

"I'll take her upstairs when you're ready." Nelson reached for the light switch out of old habit, then stopped himself.

Raiyan's gaze went to the files spread across the desk, then back to Liyana. "Not yet." His hand stayed where it was.

Nelson nodded and stepped further into the room. "Mrs. Mansoor called. Miss Elena and Miss Amirah will be here before noon. I'll bring them straight to the manor."

"Good." Raiyan didn't look up. "She'll want to stay here."

"She will." An edge of humor crept into Nelson's voice.

"She'll ask for Miriam." His thumb didn't stop moving through her hair.

"Miriam already knows." Nelson allowed himself the ghost of a smile.

Raiyan nodded once. His voice stayed level, but there was no mistaking it for a request. "Don't let her leave Liyana's side."

"She won't," Nelson said simply.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then, without looking up: "If she cries when I leave."

Nelson weighed how honest to be. "She probably will."

Raiyan gave a short nod, the kind that cost him something. "I'll tell her what I always do."

"Daddy always comes back," Nelson finished.

Raiyan looked at him then, something in his eyes loosening for the first time all morning. "Thank you." Quieter than anything else he'd said.

Nelson inclined his head. "She knows you'll come back, sir." He slipped out, closing the door behind him.

Raiyan's thumb kept moving through Liyana's hair long after the door had clicked shut. He didn't reach for the files for a long time. When he finally did, he read the first paragraph, reached the bottom of the page, and realized he hadn't understood a single sentence of it.

***

Geneva was already awake beyond the terminal glass. Raiyan walked through arrivals the way he always did, unhurried, like the airport was moving to accommodate him rather than the other way around.

Michael caught up before they reached the car. "Sir."

"What changed?" Raiyan asked, without slowing his pace.

"The plaintiffs filed a substitution request." Michael kept pace beside him, eyes on his tablet.

"For counsel?" His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Yes. It was approved this morning." Michael didn't look up from the screen.

"Who took over?" Raiyan's stride didn't change, but his attention sharpened.

Michael cleared his throat, a tell Raiyan had learned to read years ago. "Lead counsel on the Mansoor Corp case is now Ms. Al Fayez. Zoya Al Fayez."

The name should have been just a name.

Raiyan stopped walking.

Michael made it another step before realizing Raiyan was no longer beside him. He stopped too, looked back once, then kept going as though neither of them had noticed. "From what I found, she's taken on some powerful families over the last two years. Won every time. Hasn't lost a single case."

Raiyan turned his head just enough to look at him.

A dry, uneven sound left him, something that might have passed for a laugh in someone else's chest. "Let her. There's a first time for everything."

He turned and kept walking.

His phone rang before they reached the car. He pulled it from his jacket, and the screen lit up bright enough that Michael stopped talking mid-sentence and Armaan looked up from his tablet.

His lock screen was Liyana: not quite three, caught mid-laugh, dark wavy hair going in every direction, one sock missing, hazel eyes bright with a happiness that belonged only to her.

Raiyan answered before the second ring. The cold, controlled register he carried with everyone else softened the moment her voice came through.

"Hey, baby girl."

"DADDYYYYYYY—"

He stopped walking, one hand going briefly to his temple. "Hey. I'm here. Tell me what happened."

"You went AWAY. I waked up and I looked and I looked and you weren't ANYWHERE—"

"I know, baby." His voice went even softer.

"I don't LIKE work, Daddy. I just misshh you."

Raiyan looked away for a moment before he answered, his voice almost a whisper. "I miss you too."

From somewhere behind her, a woman's voice, smooth and controlled. "She hasn't eaten. I've tried everything."

"Lily." He found the tone that always worked on her, gentle but certain, and the crying eased off just enough that she was listening. "Did you eat your eggs?"

A guilty pause. "...One. But Daddy—it was a big one."

The corner of his mouth moved. He caught it and pressed it flat. "And the toast?"

"The toast was dirty." Flat, final, no room for argument.

Elena's voice cut in, brisk and already anticipating the complaint. "I've adjusted the toaster."

"Good." Some of the tension left his shoulders. "Lily. When have I ever not come back?"

Dead serious now, the kind of serious only a two-year-old could manage over a question this size. "...Never."

"Right. Never." He let a moment pass before pushing further. "So what does that mean?"

"...You're coming back?"

"I'm coming back." Steady, no hesitation in it at all.

"Pinky promise?"

"Pinky promise." He said it like it was a binding legal document.

"Daddy? How many sleeps?"

"Two." He almost regretted saying it out loud.

Fingers counting somewhere on the other end, and not liking what they landed on. "That's SO many. No one sings the song right when you're gone. They do the slow part fast."

Raiyan let the silence stretch, listening. He was standing in a private terminal in Geneva, a legal case building across two continents, and losing a debate about song tempo to someone who weighed twelve kilograms.

"Two sleeps," he said. "And I'll sing it so slow you'll fall asleep before the second verse."

A sniff, then a considering hush. "...Okay," she said finally, small and real now, all the earlier performance gone.

"I love you the most in the whole world."

His chest went warm and full the same way it always did. "I love you the most in the whole world," he said back.

"You love me the most, Daddy," she corrected, gently but firmly, as though they'd arrived at the right answer together.

Elena's voice again, quiet and even. "Say goodbye, Daddy is busy, sweetheart."

"Bye, Daddy. Come back quick."

"Quick as I can." He meant it more than she'd ever know.

He waited until she hung up, then slipped the phone into his pocket.

"Michael." His voice had already shifted registers, warmth gone.

"Sir." Michael shifted the folder under his arm. "Full case history on the opposing counsel—"

Raiyan looked up, waiting.

Michael flipped it open. "The lawsuit is only one part of it. Three anonymous complaints reached the regulators this week. Two investors have delayed renewing their positions, and confidential financial figures were leaked to the press yesterday." He glanced down at the folder. "None of it is unusual on its own. All of it in the same week is."

Raiyan looked at him directly. "You think someone's coordinating it?"

"I think someone knows where to press." Michael's tone stayed carefully neutral.

Raiyan adjusted his cuff, an old reflex. "Find out."

The order landed quietly. He turned toward the exit, three steps from the door when he saw them.

A couple stood near the seating area, neither of them familiar. The woman held two coffees, laughing at something the man said, and gestured carelessly enough for one cup to spill over the rim.

He didn't know her. There was no reason to keep looking, no reason for his feet to stop.

But something about the gesture, the coffee, the careless laugh pulled loose a memory he'd spent years keeping buried, and for the first time in two and a half years, Raiyan forgot where he was.